Day 6: My Mom

Day 6: 40 minutes, 4,403 steps, 2.12 miles.

Dear @jstallz @intrinsicpaths,

Today I chose to walk around the track at the middle school next door. I felt like I needed simple repetitions, a simple path so I didn’t have to think too hard. I woke up this morning with the memories of my mom’s passing. She died at 11:35 pm on January 1, 2015. I had been sitting with her for two or three days because she had started to transition. She could go at any minute, and I didn’t want her to be alone. So I sat there studying the way her gnarled fingers curled around a tightly rolled white washcloth, positioned there by a nurse. Her toothless mouth gaped wide open, her breathing haggard and irregular. They assured me that the morphine numbed any pain she might have.

I stroked her forehead and put chapstick on her tightly drawn lips, thinking it might give her some comfort. I felt numb, empty, cold nothingness as I listened to the muffled sounds of the nursing home on the other side of the door. I kept looking around the room thinking that my dad would be standing there- I couldn’t shake the sense that he was waiting for my mom. Night. The room was dark- only the yellow glow from a single lamp showing the way. It was just me and her, now.

Suddenly, my mom’s breathing intensified-startling me out of my stillness. It seemed that she was trying to wake up and I was so confused. My confusion quickly turned to panic as she started breathing so hard that her lips clamped shut for the first time in days. She seemed to be in so much pain. I rang and rang for the nurse, but she never came. So I held my mom and watched helplessly as her chest laboriously rose high and plummeted. It took longer and longer for her chest to rise again, until it simply didn’t. I waited. I waited a long time as my tears welled up in my eyes. Oh, mommy… I laid my head on the pillow next to her and this wretched sound burst forth from the depths of my belly, tore through days of stoic acceptance, my tensed-jawed determination to not cry over her. Against my will, my wails reverberated down the dim halls until the nurse finally appeared a few minutes after midnight. But I was so alone. #walking #selfcare #grief #mom #mentalillness #alzheimers

~Tinooseus!